Summit of First Brother, Manning Park
Going to the Olympics in B.C.? Be prepared for Canadian Border patrol agents with an attitude! Last week when crossing into B.C. on my way to Manning Provincial Park I was pulled over for a routine check for the first time in over ten years (I go up there around two to four times a year). The agent inside grilled me like she just graduated from the Gestapo Academy, needing details of my finances, names of friends I was meeting, how long I knew them and where I met them, etc. Now I suppose most of the questions may have been relevant seeing that one person loaded with ski and camping gear for a 5 day stay poses a national security risk to Canada. What I took offense at was her attitude, she was rude arrogant condescending and convinced I was up to no good.
To make it worse another agent, who seemed friendly and pleasant at the time, while inspecting my vehicle may have purposely slashed open my Thermarest sleeping pad. I can't prove this, or hardly even believe it, but the pad was in fine shape before I crossed the border. When I got to my destination the pad was deflated and sported a two inch slash in the side. It was a very clean cut as if from a knife or razor, there was nothing I owned near the pad that could have even punctured it let along make such a clean cut. Not a good way to begin a trip. I'm glad that my next trip will not involve any border crossings!
Read More...
Summary only...
Krummholz on the First Brother Summit
On Sunday I returned from my winter photo and ski trip to British Columbia, unfortunately with a cold. Since I'm still feeling under the weather this post will be short. I ended up doing a five day backcountry ski trip to the Brothers in
Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia. The weather was fairly mild for January, no lower than 10ºF and I had the ridge and surrounding mountains completely to myself for all five days. The best photos from the trip came from the wild shapes of ice encrusted trees (Krummholz) high up on the summits. More to come...
Read More...
Summary only...
Cariboo Mountains British Columbia
A few last minute business obligations and stormy winter weather has made me postpone my planned winter photography trip to British Columbia. I'm still hoping to get out in the next few days though. In the meantime here is an image made several years ago in Wells Grey Park of British Columbia during an avalanche awareness course.
Read More...
Summary only...
Tim Johnson pulking it in Manning.
The weather in the Pacific Northwest finally seems to be turning back to a cooler pattern. So today I'm wrapping up some business and then packing for a two week photo/ski trip to the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. My first destination will be the
Wendy Thompson Hut in Marriott Basin of the Cayoosh Range and then weather permitting a little further south to
Manning Provincial Park where the above photo was made several years ago. Hopefully I'll have lots of new images to share when I return.
Read More...
Summary only...
Olympic National Park Washington
Now that the holidays are long past all my new images are edited and the social networking thing is nearly under control it's once again time to start a new project, finding and marketing to new clients. This task fills me with hope optimism and excitement while at the same time filling me with frustration and dread. I'm excited because of the possibility of finding new clients that will love my work license it repeatedly under fair terms and provide income to pay the bills and perhaps buy some much needed equipment.
The frustration and dread comes from the difficulty in finding the right contacts to approach, those who are actually looking for and using my type of photography for their projects, and how to get their attention away from the other 10,000 photographers doing the same thing. There are many ways of doing this from camping out in bookstores and writing down info gathered from magazines, to spending countless hours online conducting searches of editors and art buyers. One of the more popular methods for commercial photographers is to purchase a targeted list from a company and today while contemplating that option I came upon this
blog article at Heather Morton's site.
All of what the article describes is of course nothing new, editors and art buyers have always been deluged with photographers and artists marketing efforts. It's not a good feeling knowing that despite your best efforts and outstanding images you have a very slim chance of not going directly into the trash bin. About the only thing that has changed in this day of digital photography is that the art buyers and editors don't have trash bins anymore for all the mailers and emails, they have full sized industrial dumpsters.
Now I'm going to get back to printing a batch of new mailers because I know someone out there has a big project and needs just the right image...
Read More...
Summary only...
